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What did you expect? Lessons from the French bonus/malus
Abstract
What did you expect? Lessons from the French bonus/malus
Ex post evaluations are crucial to measure the empirical effects of public policies. At the same time, one can wonder how much of these effects could be anticipated ex ante. We address this question for the bonus/malus policy introduced in France to reduce
Co
2 emissions. This policy was, in particular, supposed to be financially neutral. At the end of the day, the
Co
2 emissions have been reduced by 5% at a cost of 225 M€. Using a structural approach, we show that this cost was not predictable ex ante. The underlying reason is that consumers appear to react more to this policy than to standard changes in prices.
Classification JEL : D12, H23, L62, Q58, C51
... The taxes and subsidies were designed so that the program would be budget-neutral in expectation. However, in 2008, the program incurred a debt of 225 million euros, which was widely attributed to an unexpectedly large consumer response to the program (D'Haultfoeuille et al., 2010). To try to reduce the deficit, the French government made slight changes to the taxes and subsidies in 2010. ...
... The price of the vehicle and the tax enter the equation in logs. Similarly toD'Haultfoeuille et al. (2010) andZachariadis (2011), who model the French and German markets, respectively, we instrument for the price and within-class share of registrations using the average of the same characteristics of the vehicles sold under other brands in the same segment, and the average of vehicles sold under the same brand in other segments. We use observations from 2005-2010 to increase the amount of variation in the vehicle prices and characteristics, thereby easing the identification of the coefficients on these variables. ...
France, Germany, and Sweden link vehicle taxes to the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rates of passenger vehicles. Based on new vehicle registration data from 2005–2010, a vehicle’s tax is negatively correlated with its registrations. The effect is somewhat stronger in France than in Germany and Sweden. Taking advantage of the theoretical equivalence between an emissions rate standard and a CO2-based emissions rate tax, we estimate the effect on manufacturers’ profits of reducing emissions rates. For France, a decrease of 5 grams of CO2 per kilometer reduces profits by 24 euros per vehicle. We find considerable heterogeneity across manufactures and countries.
Cet article évalue l’impact incitatif de la hausse en 2006 de 25 % à 40 % du taux de crédit d’impôt sur les travaux d’amélioration de l’efficacité énergétique réservée aux propriétaires depuis deux ans au plus d’un logement achevé avant 1977. Un modèle d’appariement combiné à des triples différences est estimé sur données fiscales exhaustives. Si le taux avait été maintenu à 25 %, un ménage éligible sur quinze, parmi les déclarants occupant un logement achevé entre 1969 et 1976, n’aurait pas recouru au crédit d’impôt en 2006, un sur huit en 2007 et 2008. Sauf à supposer des économies d’émissions de CO 2 très importantes après travaux, le montant d’aide publique par tonne de CO 2 évitée serait supérieur à 32 €, la valeur tutélaire du carbone.
Dans cet article, nous proposons une introduction aux méthodes d’évaluation expérimentales et quasi-expérimentales. L’objectif de ces méthodes est d’identifier économétriquement les effets causaux des politiques publiques. Nous présentons les concepts et les intuitions à partir d’exemples numériques simples, complétés par des tableaux et des graphiques, sans recourir à des techniques économétriques avancées. Nous illustrons la discussion avec des exemples concrets, incluant par exemple la politique de revenu de solidarité active (RSA), un projet de construction de barrage, un programme de formation professionnelle, et des mesures agro-environnementales. Nous discutons systématiquement les biais principaux et les problèmes potentiels associés à chaque méthode.
Transport accounts for an estimated 23% of energy-related global CO2 emissions, a large share of this for leisure and tourism purposes. Despite national and sector-specific pledges to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases, there are no consistent policies for the transport sector, which is characterized by continued strong growth. Against this background, this paper investigates holiday travel patterns of one of the most important tourism markets worldwide, Germany, based on data from annual travel surveys ('Reiseanalyse', with n=7500). Data on trip numbers, transport modes and travel distances are evaluated, indicating that emissions of greenhouse gases related to holiday travel (including trips lasting 5 days and longer) are significant at an average 320 kg CO2 per trip and person. Findings also show that the distribution of holiday travel emissions is highly skewed among the population and heavily depending on trip type. While about a quarter of the population does not participate in holiday travel at all, a small, highly mobile and wealthier share of travellers, 4% of the German population, engages in five or more holiday trips per year. These travellers are also more likely to participate in the most carbon-intense trips, long-haul flights and cruises, which generate 2 t CO2 and more per trip.
Germany has one of the most ambitious climate policy goals worldwide, having pledged to reduce national emissions by 40% by 2020, and 80–95% by 2050 (base year: 1990). 2015 data suggests that progress on decarbonisation has slowed, also because emissions from the transport sector have grown. Road transport, which is contributing 20.5% to Germany's CO2 emissions, has become a major obstacle to achieving the country's policy goals. This paper analyses energy use from road transport in order to provide a better understanding of emissions from this sub-sector. Data is derived from representative longitudinal household surveys as well as mobility and fuel diaries for the period 2002–2015. Analysis reveals significant growth in energy-inefficient car choices, as well as considerable differences in mobility patterns (distances driven, driving styles) and actual fuel consumption between car segments. Findings suggest that German transport policies will fail to deliver significant emission reductions if complexities in car model choices and use patterns are ignored. Both command-and-control and market-based measures will be needed to align the transport sector with climate goals, while persisting policy inconsistencies will also have to be addressed. Findings are of central relevance for EU-wide and global climate policy in the transport sector.
We analyze the evolution of CO2 emissions of new vehicles sold in France between 2003 and 2008. We investigate in particular the effect of two policies introduced during that time: the energy label requirement, which went into effect in the end of 2005, and a feebate based on CO2 emissions of new vehicles in 2008. We estimate a flexible model of demand for automobiles that incorporates consumers’ heterogeneity and valuation of vehicle CO2 emissions. Our results show that there has been a shift in preferences towards low-emitting cars. Moreover, the timing of these changes is consistent with the introduction of the two policies. This suggests that the feebate had a crowding-in effect in addition to its price effect. Overall, the change in preferences accounts for 40% of the overall decrease in average CO2 emissions of new cars in the period.
There is widespread consensus that current climate policy for passenger transportation is insufficient to achieve significant emission reductions in line with global climate stabilization goals. This article consequently has a starting point in the notion of ‘path dependency’ (Schwanen et al., 2011) and an observed ‘implementation gap’ (Banister and Hickman, 2013), suggesting that significant mitigation policies for transport do not emerge in the European Union because of various interlinked ‘transport taboos’, i.e. barriers to the design, acceptance and implementation of such transport policies that remain unaddressed as they constitute political risk. The paper argues that without addressing transport taboos, such as highly unequal individual contributions to transport volumes and emissions, social inequality of planned market-based measures, the role of lobbyism, and the various social and psychological functions of mobility, it will remain difficult to achieve significant emission reductions in passenger transport. Yet, transport taboos remain largely ignored among EU policy makers because their discussion would violate ‘order’, i.e. harm specific interests within neoliberal governance structures and the societal foundations and structures of transport systems built on these.
Bonus-malus taxes appear to have been successful in encouraging people to change to less polluting travel options in France (e.g. the tax on large and small engined cars). We hypothesize that they have three possible effects on consumer behaviour. The positive effects are: 1) a price effect (the less polluting option is subsidized and the polluting option is taxed); and 2) a social norm effect (the less polluting option is classified as pro-social and the polluting option as antisocial). The negative effect 3) is that they may decrease intrinsic motivation (crowding out). We provide an initial test of this tripartite model using survey data on students given a choice between taking the plane or the train between Toulouse to Paris. The first study shows that imposing a hypothetical bonus-malus tax has both a price effect (relative to a control condition where only the norm justifying the tax is presented) and a norm effect (relative to a control condition in which only the corresponding price difference is presented without mention of the tax). The second study presents a set of choices where the environmental norms and price differences are held constant, but the size of the contribution of the bonus-malus tax to the final price of each option is varied. This study confirms our prediction that a larger bonus-malus subsidy/tax reduces propensity to choose the less polluting option (i.e. the train). As the positive effects outweigh the negative effects in most of the choices studied, we conclude that bonus-malus taxes constitute a promising policy instrument.
Mobility growth poses considerable challenges to city planners around the world, as it entails problems of congestion, air pollution, and accidents. Many cities have thus sought to increase the share of sustainable transport, and specifically travel by bicycle. However, it appears that measures to foster cycling are often implemented on an ad hoc basis, lacking strategic focus and a more profound understanding of bicycle cultures. New insights can be gained from Copenhagen, Denmark, a selfdeclared City of Cyclists that has made considerable progress towards increasing the share of travel by bicycle, with the political goal to become the “world’s best city for bicycling”. In this article, the success, reproducibility and limitations of the Copenhagen bicycle strategy are discussed in an urban transport transitions framework, based on a content- and discourse analysis of the city’s official documents to assess the respective role of market-based, command-and-control, and soft policy measures in encouraging bicycling. Results suggest that soft policies, integrated with command-and-control measures, and the consideration of bicyclist expectations and concerns with regard to perceptions of safety, speed and comfort have been key in achieving high bicycle trip shares. Integrating these in comprehensive planning frameworks appears to be an approach that is more likely to foster bicycle cultures that can result in urban transport transitions.
Traditional merger analysis is difficult to implement when evaluating mergers in industries with differentiated products. I discuss an alternative, which consists of demand estimation and the use of a model of postmerger conduct to simulate the competitive effects of a merger. I estimate a brand-level demand system for ready-to-eat cereal using supermarket scanner data and use the estimates to (1) recover marginal costs, (2) simulate postmerger price equilibria, and (3) compute welfare effects, under a variety of assumptions. The methodology is applied to five mergers, two of which occurred and for which I compare predicted to actual outcomes.
This article considers the problem of "supply-and-demand" analysis on a cross section of oligopoly markets with differentiated products. The primary methodology is to assume that demand can be described by a discrete-choice model and that prices are endogenously determined by price-setting firms. In contrast to some previous empirical work, the techniques explicitly allow for the possibility that prices are correlated with unobserved demand factors in the cross section of markets. The article proposes estimation by "inverting" the market-share equation to find the implied mean levels of utility for each good. This method allows for estimation by traditional instrumental variables techniques.
The stock of durable goods can be represented by its holdings distribution, defined as the joint distribution of age and physical condition of the population of durable goods. This paper derives the holdings distribution which arises under stationary conditions when durable goods deteriorate according to a Markov process. We show that given the scrappage and utilization decisions of consumers, the holdings distribution F(x) is an equilibrium distribution of an associated regenerative Markov process. Using a basic result from the theory of regenerative stochastic processes, we characterize F(x) as the ratio of the expected number of periods the durable's condition is better than x to the expected lifetime of the asset. Using data from the 1977 National Transportation Survey we illustrate these results by estimating a simple two-parameter model of automobile deterioration and comparing the implied distribution of automobile holdings to the actual distribution.
This paper presents a model of automobile choice by single vehicle households. This effort is distinguished from previous disaggregate automobile holdings models primarily by the use of the nested logit model rather than the more restrictive multinomial logit model. We present a 2-step estimation technique that provides consistent and asymptotically efficient parameter estimates, yet is tractable for very large choice sets. Using disaggregate data on 237 one-vehicle households we estimate the unknown parameters on an automobile choice model containing 785 individual makes, models and vintages of passenger vehicles.
The ready-to-eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration, high price-cost margins, large advertising-to-sales ratios, and numerous introductions of new products. Previous researchers have concluded that the ready-to-eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with nearly collusive pricing behavior and intense nonprice competition. This paper empirically examines this conclusion. In particular, I estimate price-cost margins, but more importantly I am able empirically to separate these margins into three sources: (i) that which is due to product differentiation; (ii) that which is due to multi-product firm pricing; and (iii) that due to potential price collusion. The results suggest that given the demand for different brands of cereal, the first two effects explain most of the observed price-cost margins. I conclude that prices in the industry are consistent with noncollusive pricing behavior, despite the high price-cost margins. Leading firms are able to maintain a portfolio of differentiated products and influence the perceived product quality. It is these two factors that lead to high price-cost margins.
This paper develops techniques for empirically analyzing demand and supply in differentiated product markets and then applies these techniques to the U.S. automobile industry. The authors' framework enables one to obtain estimates of demand and cost parameters for a class of oligopolistic differentiated products markets. These estimates can be obtained using only widely available product-level and aggregate consumer-level data, and they are consistent with a structural model of equilibrium in an oligopolistic industry. Applying these techniques, the authors obtain parameters for essentially all autos sold over a twenty-year period. Copyright 1995 by The Econometric Society.